His Mask of Retribution

‘My candle is almost spent.’ Her pride would let her say nothing more. She glanced across to the mantelpiece where the lone candle spluttered.

‘It is.’ He made no move, just looked at her. His gaze dropped to the broken hairbrush that lay on the floor between them. ‘Not very ladylike behaviour.’

‘Highway robbery, assaulting my father and abducting me on the way to my wedding are hardly gentlemanly.’

‘They are not,’ he admitted. ‘But as I told you before, I am what your father made me.’

She stared at him. ‘What has my father ever done to you? What is all of this about?’

He gave a hard laugh and shook his head. ‘Have I not already told you?’

‘Contrary to what you believe, my father is a good man.’

‘No, Lady Marianne, he is not.’ There was such ferocity in his eyes at the mention of her father that she took a step backwards and, as she did, her foot inadvertently kicked a large shard of the handle so that it slid across the floor, coming to a halt just before the toes of his shoes.

She saw him glance at it, before that steady gaze returned to hers once more. ‘My mother’s hairbrush.’

She looked down at the smashed brush, then back up at the highwayman and the fear made her stomach turn somersaults. She swallowed. ‘Does she know that her son is a highwayman who has terrorised and robbed half of London?’

‘The newspapers exaggerate, Lady Marianne. I have terrorised and robbed six people and six people only, your father amongst them.’

Her heart gave a stutter at his admission.

‘And my mother is dead,’ he added.

She glanced away, feeling suddenly wrong-footed, unsure of what to say.

He carried on regardless. ‘Were you trying to beat the door down to escape or merely destroy my possessions?’

‘Neither,’ she said. ‘I wished to…’ she hesitated before forcing herself on ‘…to attract your attention.’

‘You have it now. Complete and undivided.’

She dared a glance at him and saw that his eyes were implacable as ever.

‘What is it that you wish to say?’

The smell of candle smoke hit her nose and she peered round at the mantelpiece to see only darkness where the candle had been. A part of her wanted to beg, to plead, to tell him the truth. But she would almost rather face the terror than that. Almost. She experienced the urge to grab the branch of candles from his hand, but she did not surrender to the panic. Instead, she held her head up and kept her voice calm.

‘All of the candlesticks are empty.’

His gaze did not falter. She thought she saw something flicker in his eyes, but she did not understand what it was. He stepped forwards.

She took a step back.

He looked into her eyes with that too-seeing look that made her feel as if her soul was laid bare to him, as if he could see all of her secrets, maybe even the deepest and darkest one of all. She knew she should look away, but she did not dare, for she knew that all around them was darkness.

The silence hissed between them.

‘I would be obliged if you would fill them. All of them.’ She forced her chin up and pretended to herself that she was speaking to the footman in her father’s house, even though her heart was thudding nineteen to the dozen and her legs were pressed tight together to keep from shaking.

His eyes held a cynical expression. He turned away and headed for the door, taking the branch of candles with him. She heard the darkness whisper behind her.

‘No! Stop!’ She grabbed at his arm with both hands to stop him, making the candles flicker wildly. ‘You cannot…’ She manoeuvred herself between him and the door, trying to block his exit, keeping a tight hold of him all the while.

His gaze dropped to where her fingers clutched so tight to the superfine of his coat sleeve that her knuckles shone white, then back to her face.

She felt her cheeks warm and let her hands fall away. ‘Where are you going, sir?’ She was too embarrassed to meet his gaze. Her heart was racing hard enough to leap from her chest and she felt sick.

He raised his brows. ‘I may be mistaken, but I thought you requested candles. I was going to have my man bring you some.’

Her eyes flickered to the branch of candles in his hand, then to the darkness that enclosed the room beyond. ‘But…’ The words stopped on her lips. She did not want to say them. She could not bear for him to know. Yet the darkness was waiting and she knew what it held. She felt the terror prickle at the nape of her neck and begin to creep across her scalp.

‘Lady Marianne.’

Her gaze came back to his, to those rich warm amber eyes that glowed in the light of his candles. Please, she wanted to say, wanted to beg. Already she could feel the tremor running through her body. But still she did not yield to it, not in front of him. She shook her head.

‘If I were to leave the candles here…’

‘Yes,’ she said, and the relief was so great that she felt like weeping. ‘Yes,’ she repeated and could think of nothing else. The highwayman passed her the branch of candles. Her hand was trembling as she took it; she hated the thought that he might see it, so she turned away. ‘Thank you,’ she added and sank back into the room, clutching the candles tight to ward away the darkness.

There was silence for a moment, then the closing of the door and the sound of his footsteps receding.

She stared at the flicker of the candle flames and thought again that, in truth, he was no ordinary highwayman.

The clock in the corner on the mantelpiece chimed midnight. Misbourne left his son and his wife in the drawing room and made his way to his study. He needed time to think, needed space away from his wife’s incessant weeping, because his heart was filled with dread and his stomach churning with fear over the gamble he had taken.

‘Had he released her she would be here by now,’ Linwood had whispered and Misbourne knew that his son was right. Yet he could not admit it, even to himself. He needed a brandy to calm his nerves. He needed time to gather his strength and hide his fears.

But everything changed when he opened the door to his study. For there, on the desk that he had left clear, lay two pieces of paper like pale islands floating on the vast sea of dark polished mahogany. One was a smooth-cut sheet of writing paper, and the other was a crushed paper ball. His heart faltered before rushing off at a gallop. He hurried across the room to the desk. The writing paper bore his own crest, but it was not his hand that had penned those three bold letters and single word.

IOU Misbourne.

The ink glistened in the candlelight. His hand was shaking as he touched a finger to it and saw its wetness smear. He whirled around, knowing that the words had only just been written. Behind him the curtains swayed. He wrenched them open, but there was no one there. The window was up and the damp scent of night air filled his nose. He leaned his hands on the sill, craning his head out, searching the night for the man who had the audacity to walk right into his home to leave the message. But not a single one of the lamp posts that lined the road had been lit. The street was dark and deserted. Not a figure stirred. Not a dog barked. And of the highwayman there was no sign.

He knew what the crumpled ball of paper was before he opened it. The letter he had sent to the highwayman. A letter that could have been used against Misbourne. A letter that could cost him much in the wrong hands. Crumpled as if it were worthless. The villain knew what the document was. He knew, and there was only one man left alive with that knowledge. Misbourne felt sick at the thought. It was everything he had guarded against. Everything he had prayed so hard to prevent. He shut the window and closed the curtains, knowing it would do little good; the highwayman had been in his home, the one place that should have been safe.

He filled a glass with brandy, sat behind his desk and drank the strong warming liquid down. His eyes never left the words written upon the paper. Misbourne was more afraid than he had ever been, both for himself and for Marianne. He knew there was only one thing to do when the highwayman next made contact. If the highwayman next made contact.

Chapter Four

Marianne sat perched on the edge of the bed. The fire that the highwayman’s accomplice had set last night had long since burned away to nothing and the air was cool. The early morning light seeped through the cracks of the window shutters, filtering into the bedchamber. The bed was only slightly rumpled where she had lain awake all night on top of the covers. She had not climbed within the sheets, nor had she worn the nightclothes that the accomplice had left neatly folded upon the dressing table. She had not even removed her shoes.

It had been the first night in almost three years that Marianne had spent alone. And she had barely slept a wink. All night she had waited. All night she had feared. But the highwayman had not come back to hurt her. Instead, he had filled the room with candles to light the darkness of the night. Eventually, as night had turned to dawn, her fear had diminished and all she could think of was the highwayman in the rookery and the look in his eyes as they had met hers. She thought of the villains quailing before him, of the wary respect in their eyes, of how he had kept her safe.

He was tougher, stronger, more dangerous than any villain. And she remembered how, last night, she had physically accosted him, clutching at him in her panic, even barring the door so that he would not leave. She closed her eyes and cringed at the memory. He knew. She had seen it in his eyes. Yet he had not said one word of her weakness, nor used it against her. She slipped off her shoes and moved to sit on the rug in the bright warmth of the narrow beam of sunshine. And she thought again of the man with the hauntingly beautiful amber eyes and the dark mask that hid his face, and the strange conflict of emotion that was beating in her chest.

When Knight opened the door to the yellow bedchamber his heart skipped a beat. The words he had come to say slipped from his mind. He stared and all else was forgotten in that moment as he watched Marianne hurriedly rising from where she had been sitting upon the floor. The room was dim, but small shafts of sunlight were penetrating through the seams of the closed shutters. She was standing directly in the line of a thin ray of light so that it lit her in a soft white light. There was an ethereal quality to her, so soft and pale with such deep, dark, soulful eyes.